Ice, ashes, pain and surprises
by Nuke F. Montagne
Summary: What is happening to the boy who was once Harry Potter? What does Severus Snape have to do with it? My twisted take on Severitus' challenge, modfied to suit my wishes. Proceed with extreme caution


Title: Ice, pain, and a surprise.  
  
Author: Dramicka  
  
Rating: pg-13 for now.  
  
Summary: Something happens on Harry Potter's 16th birthday. What is it? How did it come to be? How is Severus Snape tied into this? And why do people keep talking about some kind of lab explosion, the . . . er, the wizarding kind, which happened SIXTEEN years ago, whenever he is around? Read in order to find out. I swear this will be good, just bear with me for the moment.  
  
Disclaimer: if the characters of the HP world were mine, I would be filthy rich, would DEFINETLY NOT suffer through the horrors of school and... yeah. JKR is a genius, and I bow before her superior species. Read on!  
  
Author Notes: I'm permanently revising all this crap, so the story might change from time to time. But it won't be anything significant, so don't worry your pretty little heads about that.  
  
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Chapter 1: as of yet, untitled. Open to suggestions.  
  
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Harry groaned.  
  
This was truly -not- his day.  
  
Dragging the insanely heavy trunk behind him, he looked around for his . . . well, his -uncle-, actually. He found the idea of calling that porky -bastard- a relative, rather distasteful.  
  
Sickening, even.  
  
He snapped out of his musings and and looked around once more.  
  
Aha.  
  
There he was.  
  
Vernon Dursley was at the moment attempting to hide his more than impressive bulk behind the barrier to the next platform.  
  
Harry Potter sighed for one last time, just as he approached him. Considering the look on the man's rather flat looking face, he was obviously hoping that the boy wouldn't notice him. After scowling at the boy and roaring (at a moderate volume) at him to get into the car they drove away.  
  
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The ride was short and silent except for -Uncle- Vernon's huffs (which rather reminded Harry of the way Hogwarts Express sounded, just as it was about to take off . . . only not as comforting).  
  
The boy's mind somewhere up in the clouds, as he absently wondered as too how, exactly, was it possible for Dursley to fit in the car, much less the seat. It seemed to defy the law of nature. He also wondered just why he bothered wondering about that in the first place.  
  
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as he felt yet another migraine coming on. It just figured.  
  
After all, it wasn't as if someone ever cared that he felt like hell and just wanted to curl up and cry. But, he couldn't do that, could he . . . He was the savior of the wizarding world, after all.  
  
Bollocks,  
  
He slouched in the back seat, still not quite able to wrap his mind around everything that happened ... like all those people who died.  
  
War casualties. That was what Dumbledore said, wasn't it?  
  
God damnit! There weren't -supposed -to be -war casualties-.  
  
No. Not again. He stifled his fury, rage, and pain, and tore his mind away from the subject... however, he -still- didn't notice anything odd about the silence in the car. He didn't find it suspicious that the one person who perhaps hated him more than the dark lord himself didn't have anything scathing to say. (A/N: Aren't we all rolling our eyes and clucking our tongues by now?.)  
  
There. He could already see the house. After taking one long look at it he sighed.  
  
He wasn't sure he was going to survive this summer... It was going to be hell. No. It was going to be worse than hell. And he was totally right... it was going worse.  
  
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July 31st....  
  
*Happy birthday, Harry James Potter...*  
  
"You won't ever be coming back to that freak school again, you worthless waste of space!" Vernon spat, as he slammed Harry against the wall one last time before throwing him into his room and slamming the door.  
  
Or, more accurately, his cupboard. The youth was barely conscious and yet the words still hurt. *Oh, but I -am- a worthless waste of space. I'm a freak... a murderer. I -deserve- this.* He mused.  
  
*Or not.*  
  
Once again, after gently touching his ribs, he gasped in pain. The welts from the belt were burning, the broken bones were burning, and all those internal injuries were burning. He was on fire. And it hurt. Merlin's balls it, it hurt. He was also going crazy. That was final.  
  
He chuckled mirthlessly and then stopped as he felt some jar inside of her. He realized that he was dying... malnourished, beaten, and raped with a, pardon, STICK he had very nearly NO chance of survival... and even if it came to that . . .  
  
what did he have to lose? Raising his head weakly he looked around.  
  
He saw a bare dark room, the creaky wooden floor covered in slick blood, the only beautiful thing in there.  
  
Nothing there.  
  
His possessions? Burnt.  
  
Hedwig? Dead. Dudley twisted her head right off, the spray of steamy blood blinding Harry.  
  
He didn't have anything else. He hummed a little silly tune. Nothing left. Absolutely NOTHING left. And no one cared. Nothing, no one. No one, nothing. Was this the end?  
  
His life was slipping away, the shadows that hid him, wavering, and his desire to live, waning. Why not give in? So... what next? What would it be like?  
  
He wanted to die. And why not, really?  
  
The headmaster DID say that death was merely the. next great adventure, was it? He couldn't be bothered by attempting to remember the man's exact words.  
  
Although... no, not yet... after he would witness his 16th birthday. Yes... Then. at. that. exact. moment.  
  
He looked at the clock on the wall (how on EARTH did it survive the carnage he'd never know) and saw that there were 10 minutes til midnight.  
  
He grinned manically.  
  
Oh, the irony... Actually, if anybody'd asked what exactly he found so insanely funny. he wouldn't have been able to answer.  
  
But, of course, no one was there to ask, so it didn't matter, did it?  
  
8 minutes  
  
He wondered. Would he even feel himself slipping away? Would things slowly grow blurry, faint at the edges? Would he see a bright light, or will it be pitch dark?  
  
5 minutes  
  
Would it hurt? Would he spiral, madly, towards insanity, causing the fear to grow and making him lose control?  
  
3 minutes  
  
He mused. Would he even recognize the empty shell he would leave behind, or would he stare, pondering upon its alien shape?  
  
2 minutes  
  
Would he go to heaven or to hell, would he burn there like he burned down here?  
  
1 minute  
  
BOOM.  
  
Fuck. It was very nearly the only thing that registered in his mind before he was gripped with pain that he couldn't even imagine before this.  
  
Oh, -joy-.  
  
Let's let the bloody savior of the bloody miserable world suffer a tad bloody miserable more before bloody keeling over. Oh, get OVER it. How unfair WAS this...  
  
He arched of the floor, trying to get away from the sensation of his blood turning to ice and wings ripping right through the skin on his shoulder blades and back... whoa.  
  
Wings? Yes, wings. Bloody huge, black, leathery wing.  
  
Now -that- hurt.  
  
He once again cursed mentally, using a few choice words he never even said out loud.  
  
He speculated, as to why, exactly, these sorts of things always happened to him.  
  
His clothes were ripped into shreds as he dragged his claws (?) through them. He absently registered with a slight surprise that his skin was emerald with black wicked-looking lines that seemed to suck the light out of their surroundings, imbedded in his skin...  
  
His tail, with an odd looking spike on the end, whipped against the floor as something happened to his very insides.  
  
The pain let go as abruptly as it started and he lay there, panting.  
  
He then stood up silently, gracefully, cocked his head and listened, marveling at the way his body obeyed, his muscles seemingly made out of liquid steel, at the way he could hear the noise with which a moth's wings flapped (yes, he checked. There was a moth on the windowsill, all right?), the way he could see the pattern on the creatures wings, as well, as all of the details in the spider webs in the corner of the room  
  
He snickered quietly at the fact that the Dursleys slept all the way through his. transformation.  
  
And with that decidedly out-of-place thought he collapsed.  
  
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Authors' note: I REFUSE to continue writing until you people tell me what you think, whether I should continue, what you want this fanfic to be like, and what should happen. Don't suggest stupid things, because I AM going to use them. REVIEW!!! PLEASE!!! 


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